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“About seven feet, isn’t there?” said he. “That must be the tail end of the shoal. There’s four fathom in the fairway. Knock that buoy down with axes. I don’t think it’s picturesque somehow.” The Kroo men hacked the wooden sides to pieces in three minutes, and the mooring-chain sank with the lasst splinters of wood. Bai-Jove Judson laid the flat-iron carefully over the site, while Mr. Davies watched, biting his nails nervously.

“Can you back her against this current?” said Bai-Jove-Judson. Mr. Davies could, inch by inch, but only inch by inch, and Bai-Jove- Judson sat in the bows and gazed at various things on the bank as they came into line or opened out. The flatiron dropped down over the tail of the shoal, exactly where the buoy had been, and backed once before Bai-Jove-Judson was satisfied. Then they went up stream for half an hour, put into shoal water by the bank and waited, with a slip-rope on the anchor.

“Seems to me,” said Mr. Davies deferentially, “like as if I heard some one a-firing off at intervals, so to say.”

There was beyond doubt a dull mutter in the air. “Seems to me,” said Bai-Jove-Judson, “as if I heard a screw. Stand by to slip her moorings.”

Another ten minutes passed and the beat of engines grew plainer. Then round the bend of the river came a remarkably prettily built white-painted gunboat with a blue and white flag bearing a red boss in the centre.

“Unshackle abaft the windlass! Stream both buoys! Easy, astern. Let go, all!” The slip-rope flew out, the two buoys bobbed in the water to mark where anchor and cable had been left, and the flat- iron waddled out into midstream with the white ensign at her one mast-head.

“Give her all you can. That thing has the legs of us,” said Judson. “And down we go!”

“It’s war – bloody war. He’s going to fire,” said Mr. Davies, looking up through the engine-room hatch.

The white gunboat without a word of explanation fired three guns at the flat-iron, cutting the trees on the banks into green chips. Bai-Jove-Judson was at the wheel, and Mr. Davies and the current helped the boat to an almost respectable degree of speed.

It was an exciting chase, but it did not last for more than five minutes. The white gunboat fired again, and Mr. Davies in his engine-room gave a wild shout.

“What’s the matter? Hit?” said Bai-Jove-Judson.

“No, I’ve just seized of your roos-de-gare. Beg y’ pardon, sir.”

“Right 0! Just the half a fraction of a point more.” The wheel turned under the steady hand, as Bai-Jove-Judson watched his marks on the bank coming in line swiftly as troops anxious to aid. The flat-iron smelt the shoal water under her, checked for an instant, and went on. “Now we’re over. Come along, you thieves, there!”

The white gunboat, too hurried even to fire, was storming in the wake of the flat-iron, steering as she steered. This was unfortunate, because the lighter craft was dead over the missing buoy.

“What you do here?” shouted a voice from the bows.

“I’m going on. Hold tight. Now you’re arranged for!”

There was a crash and a clatter as the white gunboat’s nose took the shoal, and the brown mud boiled up in oozy circles under her forefoot. Then the current caught her stem by the starboard side and drove her broadside on to the shoal, slowly and gracefully. There she heeled at an undignified angle, and her crew yelled aloud.

“Neat! Oh, damn neat!” quoth Mr. Davies, dancing on the engine- room plates, while the Kroo stokers grinned.

The flat-iron turned up-stream again, and passed under the hove-up starboard side of the white gunboat, to be received with howls and imprecations in a strange tongue. The stranded boat, exposed even to her lower strakes, was as defence-less as a turtle on its back, without the advantage of the turtle’s plating. And the one big blunt gun in the bows of the flat-iron was unpleasantly near.